Battle of the Rates continues in the Clarence Valley

A lively North v South debate on rates and reporting is underway in the letters column of The Daily Examiner last week.

A Lower Clarence resident makes his feelings known on 12 May 2009:

RECENT letters and articles in this paper have expressed dissatisfaction with the inequity in property rates being charged across the Clarence Valley.
In the interests of fair debate, I wish to correct some inaccurate information which has been put forward.
Firstly, please be assured that Grafton residents have not been subsidising Angourie, Yamba or Wooloweyah residents as has been claimed. This is clear from the CVC Management Plan figures quoted below.
Secondly, in Graham Orams' article (Grafton rate burden eases evaluation, DEX, May 8, p3), he falsely claimed that Grafton and Junction Hill ratepayers' rates will 'remain the highest in the valley'.
Neither the figures for 2008/9 nor the proposed figures for 2009/10 support this statement.
The average figures for residential properties in 2008/09 were:
Residential A (Coastal Village including Angourie) $955.82, Residential D (Yamba,
Wooloweyah) $931.58, Residential E (Grafton Junction Hill) $878.35'
Under the proposed rates structure for 2009/10 the figures are: Residential A $992.23' Residential
D $960.48, Residential E $879.14.
I agree that rates equity is a very important issue and needs debate but based on accurate
information, please.
The key issue is the vast difference in land values across the Clarence Valley.
Not only do we have the inequity of similar properties in different parts of the valley paying
significantly different amounts to council for the administration of services, infrastructure,
development, planning and management, etc., but we even have similar properties in the
same street paying significantly different amounts, simply because of proximity to the beach or river.
Rates equity will never be achieved while rates are based on land values, a hangover from times when land value was an indication of its productivity and so the ability of the owner to pay.
This is no longer the case.
The whole basis upon which rates are determined needs to be re-examined if equity is to be achieved.
RON LOVERIDGE,
Angourie.

The Daily Examiner journalist replies with this salvo from the bunker on 13 May 2009:























The fight so far goes to Lower Clarence residents on points, because nowhere in his May 8 article did the journalist mention "dollar for dollar" values. Instead he couched his argument in terms of average residential rates, which of course meant that Grafton City came out with much lower average rates than many coastal towns and villages.

You know you're getting old when......

....your doctor, dentist and local pollie are all younger than you and tall tales like this tickle your fancy....

You'll know senility is closing in when Malcolm Turnbull and Joe Hockey appear to make sense.

Image source is unknown.

Is Malcolm Turnbull chanelling the ghost from Wollstonecraft?

The Australian reported on 15 May 2009:

MALCOLM Turnbull declared today that Kevin Rudd would be a one-term prime minister, in a powerful speech to rally the Liberal faithful in Sydney.

The same day Possum Comitatus over at Pollytics ran this graph:

Somehow I think it will take more ammunition than Liberal Party and Opposition leader Malcolm Turnbull has in his locker to turn this scenario around by 2010-11.

Especially as all this ex-merchant banker silvertail is really offering as a counter-measure to the Rudd Government's 2009-10 Budget is a proposal to impose an additional level of taxation, on a group which is predominately composed of working class people who co-incidentally are mostly found in age bands which are not strong Liberal Party or Nationals supporters.

Turnbull's tactic is right out of the John Winston Howard manual of dirty tricks and, if he is not careful it will rebound on him the way such tactics eventually did on the former Liberal prime minister.

A smidgen of Mad Max trivia

If online polls are anything to go by, then Women's Day readers think Mel Gibson should lose half his fortune to his wife.

Shock, horror! Aussies drink less booze than the Irish, Scots, Brits and possibly even the Kiwis

Wikimedia has this World Health Organisation map from 2008 on display along with a ranked table of world alcohol consumption based on sales.

According to a The Herald report earlier this year; "Statistics show that nearly 50 million litres of pure alcohol were consumed in Scotland in 2007 - the equivalent of 11.8 litres for every person aged over 16 - putting the nation above Spain, Italy and France in the World Health Organisation's (WHO) league table of alcohol sales.
The figure is equal to every Scot over 16 drinking 570 pints of normal-strength beer, 125 bottles of wine or 42 bottles of vodka, and enough for every adult to exceed the sensible drinking guidelines for men of 21 units of alcohol per week."

Will all Nationals and Liberal MPs blindly follow the leader and block certain budget measures

The carer supplement promised in the Budget is now before the House of Representatives as Social Security and Family Assistance Legislation Amendment (2009 Budget Measures) Bill 2009.

Likewise the financial assistance to local government to be brought forward into this financial year is presented as Financial Assistance Legislation Amendment Bill 2009.

The appropriations bills which will allow government to progress the September increase in pensions and other measures are also before our parliamentarians.

There are at least 400,000 North Coast residents waiting to see funding from the 2009-10 Commonwealth Budget flow to local government and households.

Coalition MPs should take note of that fact, particularly Nationals Member for Cowper Luke Hartsuyker who has become notorious for blindly following the leader and attempting to thwart government expenditure and whose latest effort on record on 12 May 2009 could only rely on political tripe:

I certainly welcome the opportunity to speak on this matter of public importance, because we have a government in this country that is hostage to the 24-hour news cycle. We have a government that is hostage to the 10-second sound bite and its media spin doctors. We will see handed down in this chamber tonight what the Australian people will know as a traditional Labor budget on steroids. It is going to be a budget that will usher in the era of big deficits. It will be a budget that will usher in the high level of unemployment that we are expecting in the months ahead. It is a budget that will burden the Australian people with massive debt and burden their children with massive debt.

It is time for all our parliamentarians to leave the rhetoric behind and remember the welfare of their own electorates, which are set to benefit from this budget.

Update:

Since placing this post on NCV's publication schedule the Leader of the Opposition's Budget Reply speech has been delivered with its classic dog whistle:

But tonight I will make one suggestion of a suitable offset for the Prime Minister’s consideration. One that would make for a healthier Australia and lessen the burden on public hospitals rather than increase it. The Government could comfortably afford to retain the current private health insurance rebate without any cost to the published Budget outcome by increasing the amount of excise collected on tobacco by 12.5 per cent (or about three cents extra per cigarette).

Members of parliament of all persuasions need to think carefully about the economics of such a move, when in the past taxation increases on tobacco have seen a decrease in consumption and sales of tobacco products (which form a significant income stream for many small businesses).

If this were to occur after a Turnbull-inspired tobacco taxation hike then a decrease in taxation revenue available to government is possible (eating into the optimistically projected $120 million increase in tobacco excise predicted for 2009-10 in last year's MYEFO) and, any immediate benefits from this increased taxation are likely to flow to the states rather than the Commonwealth through the GST and FAG relativities.

It is no accident that the Coalition has chosen tobacco as their political smokescreen for mindless resistance for the sake of resistance - it is rather a good distraction as the debate can quickly degenerate from discussing revenue raising measures to vilifying smokers. However, even non-smokers can do the maths.

Whale migration: It's the trooping of the flukes on the NSW North Coast

Photograph from The Far North Coaster

The Far North Coaster online magazine this week reminds us that now is the time to look seaward for spouts on the horizon, fluke slapping displays and whales moving close to shore :

The annual northern migration of humpback whales along the east coast of Australia is under way, with the first sightings reported off the North Coast over the last few weeks.
Wally Franklin, a researcher with Southern Cross University’s Whale Research Centre and co-director of The Oceania Project, said the northern migration usually began around the start of May.
“About this time we begin to see one or two whales and now we are into May the flow will start to pick up. The peak of the northward migration past Byron Bay occurs in June and July. There is evidence that the timing of the migration can vary between years, but generally the whales are incredibly regular,” Mr Franklin said.